Warekena (Guarequena), or more precisely Warekena of Xié, is an
Arawakan language of
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and of
Maroa Municipality
The Maroa Municipality ( es, Municipio Maroa) is one of the seven municipalities (municipios) that makes up the southern Venezuelan state of Amazonas and, according to the 2011 census by the National Institute of Statistics of Venezuela, the mun ...
in
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
, spoken near the
Guainia River. It is one of several languages which go by the generic name
Baré and ''Baniwa/Baniva'' – in this case, distinguished as Baniva de Maroa or Baniva de Guainía.
According to Aikhenvald (1999), there are maybe 10 speakers in Brazil and about 200 in Venezuela.
Kaufman (1994) classified it in a Warekena group of Western Nawiki Upper Amazonian, Aikhenvald (1999) in Eastern Nawiki.
Personal pronouns in Warekena are formed by adding an emphatic suffix ''-ya'' to the cross-referencing personal prefixes.
[Aikenvald, Alexandra Y. 1988. "Warekena". In Desmond C. Derbyshire & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), ''Handbook of Amazonian languages'', iv. 225–439. Berlin: Moutin de Gruyter. Cited in Bhat, D.N.S. 2004. ''Pronouns.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 25]
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
/u/ can also range to
Grammar
Unmarked constituent order is AVO, VS
o, S
aV, or S
ioV.
Indirect objects tend to be placed immediately after the predicate.
References
Languages of Brazil
Languages of Venezuela
Arawakan languages
{{Arawakan-lang-stub